The Best Advice For All Startup Companies and Entrepreneurs

If you ask someone on the street what an entrepreneur is, more likely than not, they will respond by saying that an entrepreneur is a person who starts a business after getting an idea and finding listings of offices to let. While this is indeed true, there is more to an entrepreneur than just from a corporate perspective. Believe it or not, we are all entrepreneurs. We were born into this earth as innovative intellectuals who are always thinking about survival. Entrepreneurship is a mindset, not just a business strategy.

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Infographic: 5 Reasons to Redesign an Ugly Website

We’ve all heard that a sleek, well designed website is vital for a business, but why exactly is good web design so important? Well, HubSpot breaks it down via Red Website Design’s data and infographic. It dictates exactly what impacts Internet users the most, including Load Time, Color Scheme, Layout, Trust, and HTML 5. If the primary load time is less than one second, 4.6% percent traffic growth is achieved, while four seconds or more results in negative traffic growth. For color, green has 3.0% traffic growth, while red comes at a 1.35% growth loss. For layout, the first two paragraphs are very important, users look in an F-shaped pattern, and 70% of people look at lists with bullet points. 94% of people cite design as a reason they do not trust certain websites. Finally, 27% of sites use HTML 5 – those sites account for 49% of pageviews. For all of the data laid out in a very clear manner, check out the full infographic.

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The Importance of a Consistent Brand

When people think of a brand often the first image that comes to mind is the logo. Companies like Nike, Apple, and Starbucks can be identified if you only see the logo – the name is not even necessary. In today’s digital world, branding is way more than just a logo. A consistent identity must go very deep within company collateral. It needs to communicate not only the values of the company, but also the careful precision and attention to detail.

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Infographic: Time for a Website Redesign?

Most companies reach a point in their business lifetime when their web presence no longer accurately reflects their goals or identity. This can happen for a number of reasons – after early stages of quick growth and self-discovery, or even after having been around long enough to outgrow a site that had been with them from the beginning. No matter the time or reason, approaching this risk and overlooking it can be extremely detrimental for business, as a company’s online presence largely dictates the way they are viewed to prospective clients, and the world at-large.

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The Latest Version: Why WordPress Updates are so Important

We’ve talked before on here about how much we love WordPress, and it’s definitely no secret. One of the reasons we’ve mentioned is that it’s an open-source platform, meaning that at any given time there are numerous developers fixing it and making improvements to it across the world. With so much constant attention and many new features being added, updates are released periodically making these enhancements available to the entire WordPress community.

Take advantage of these! We know it can seem overwhelming to alter the site that you’ve built, installed plug-ins and themes for, and is running smoothly, but there’s a danger to skipping these updates and benefits you’ll miss out on if you don’t.

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Anatomy of a High-Converting Landing Page

First things first: What’s a landing page? A landing page is a page a visitor is directed to after clicking on an ad. It shouldn’t be your company’s home page. Instead, it should exist as a separate webpage with one clear message and purpose, leading visitors seamlessly from the initial ad to a clear call to action, and ideally – to conversions.

Whether creating a new landing page from scratch or trying to rework an existing one for better results, here are a few tactics you can use that have been proven to ramp up landing page conversions:

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The Power of Print Marketing

There have been whispers and even yells in recent years that with the onslaught of digital marketing tactics that print “is dead” as a marketing medium. However, any smart marketer would tell you that the old school medium is in fact alive and thriving. You just need to know how to leverage its power. Let’s discuss a few features of print marketing that make it more powerful now than ever:

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How to Dazzle Your Webinar Audience

Do you host webinars for your business? Ever found yourself wondering why your attendance is low or whether you could do
a better job with your presentations? Webinars are a great way to get your message out to the right audience, promote interaction with customers, create buzz about your business or product, and increase sales. With just a little finesse, you can make your online events work even harder for your business.

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Twelve Impressive Twitter Numbers

Trends, Shares, Hashtags and Retweets!  Twitter is social media’s most interactive resource to keep in touch with virtually anything and anyone you so desire, and, in real time. Since Twitter became one of the leading social media sites, I have become curious to know the numbers that make Twitter unique; so I did some research and I came up with a list of my favorite ever-changing Twitter statistics.

124,000,000,000 (Yes, that’s 9 Zero’s!) Tweets worldwide in 2012

500 million Twitter users worldwide

300 thousand NEW Twitter visitors every day

73 percent of Twitter users are between 15 and 25 years old

50 percent of 2013 Super Bowl ads mentioned Twitter

24 million Tweets accounted for during the 2013 Super Bowl (XLVII); up nearly 50 percent from 12 million in 2011 and 15 million in 2012

22 percent of Twitter user accounts are located in the United States (that’s 110 million Americans!)

16 million: the amount of the official Twitter account followers

11 new accounts are created every second

7 years since Twitter’s 2006 launch at SXSW

2nd ranked country for Twitter users is the England, just behind the US

1st Ranked for Twitter followers is Justin Bieber, 34 million and counting

Regardless of what number or metric we measure, it’s clear that social media has taken the world by storm.  Nearly 1.5 billion people engage in one or more social media platform as of December 2012; that’s 30% of adults worldwide.  The numbers for the United States are even more impressive with 69% of Americans ages 15 and up using social media, for a tally of 168 million users.  It’s always been said that “numbers don’t lie”; so my educated guess is that this social media craze will only grow and become more embedded in our culture and economy just as the internet and television did some 20 and 60 years ago. Until next time, happy Tweeting, Liking, Pinning and connecting!